UEFA Futsal Championships Starts Today!

The 2010 UEFA Futsal Championships, alka the ‘Futsal Euro’ kicks off today in Hungary and what a tournament it is shaping up to be.

January 20th update: Italy 4 Belgium 0, Azerbaijan 3 Hungary 1

The hosts (ranked 23rd in the world) open up the action against Azerbajan (ranked 25th in the world) in Budapest before 2003 champs and 2007 runners-up Italy take on #18 Belgium on the sexy, brand new black futsal pitch at the Fonix Arena in Debrecen.

With the power of UEFA behind it, the Futsal Euro is already one of the best tournaments around and is being heavily marketed to launch the sport to new levels not just in Europe, but around the world. With all tournament tickets priced at the equivilent of $23 Canadian (cheaper than a ticket at a Toronto FC match) and international TV coverage, the competiton will surely elevate awareness of futsal to a much broader audience. You can watch matches live or on delay if you happen to have Eurosport 2 or you can visit a free ptp site such as justin.tv and watch it for free every day. Remember matches with commcercials will last 90 minutes, so take a break at work and enjoy some elite futsal 🙂

The tournament is run over 11 days and features 12 teams in 4 groups of 3 in which each team plays each other once. The top 2 in each division go on to the knockout stages. All 12 participating nations are ranked in the world top 25 with 2008 FIFA Futsal World Cup runners-ip Spain topping the list at #2. If you’re like most Canadians and aren;t sure which games will be truly awesome we highly recommend the Spain vs Portugal match on Sunday January 24th that will hopefully repeat the performance these to gave in the semi-final in the last Euro in Porto where Spain came back from 2-0 down to win. (It also ends just in time for you Torontonians to head to the Toronto International Soccer Show to watch the U16, U18 and mens invitational futsal final). Another great game will feature #3 Italy vs #8 Ukraine on the 23rd.

In the leadup to the tournament, UEFA put together an excellent series of short futsal videos available for free, done in the always brilliant production style that they are famous for, on their website UEFA.com website that will surely entertain you. If you want to see them click the link below.

http://www.uefa.com/trainingground/index.html#34005/1048576/685236

For all tournament information, history, news, photos etc visit this link

http://www.uefa.com/competitions/futsal/index.html